The frequency of occurrence of certain words has evolved differently in US and British books over the last few decades.
Image: Homer Sykes/Getty
If you associate modern British fiction with the cool, detached tones of Martin Amis and Julian Barnes, and US fiction with Jonathan Franzen's emotional inner worlds or John Irving's sentimentality, it seems you have good reason. An analysis of the digitized texts of English-language books over the past century concludes that, since the 1980s, words that carry emotional content have become significantly more common in US books than in British ones.
The study, by anthropologist Alberto Acerbi of the University of Bristol, UK, and his colleagues, takes advantage of Google’s database of more than 5 million digitally scanned books from the past several centuries. This resource has previously been used to examine the evolution of literary styles and trends in literary expressions of individualism.
Such mining of the cultural information made available by new technologies has been called ‘culturomics’. Its advocates think that these approaches can unearth trends in social opinions and norms that are otherwise concealed within vast swathes of data.
“Language use in books reflects what people are talking about and thinking about during a particular time, so Google Books provides a fascinating window into the past,” says psychologist Jean Twenge of San Diego State University in California.
The latest results certainly seem to show that familiar narratives about social mood are reflected in the literature (both fiction and non-fiction) of the twentieth century. Acerbi and his colleagues find that, whereas words connoting happy emotions show peaks of usage in the ‘roaring twenties’ and the ‘swinging sixties’, sad words come to the fore during the years of the Second World War.
But there are surprises too: the First World War doesn’t seem to register on this happy–sad index, for example. By the same measure, happiness seems to be rising since the 1990s, although it is too early to see whether the global recession will reverse that because the database extends only to 2008.
Historical trends
“The relationship between historical events and collective mood is complicated,” Acerbi admits, “but just by doing a somewhat crude analysis of emotion words it is possible to find trends that resonate with what we know about history.” He hopes that further analysis might reveal, for example, whether literature is ahead of its time or only slowly reflects other changes.
“This is a fascinating look at how two cultures have changed over time, especially how world events influence the expression of emotion in media,” says Twenge.
Overall, the use of emotion-related words in English-language books declined over the twentieth century. But distinguishing between books written using American or British English (about 1 million and 230,000, respectively) told another story.
The authors found that, despite the overall decline, emotion words have become relatively more frequent in US texts than in British books since about 1980. Conversely, before then, any differences between books from the two sides of the Atlantic had been minor. Such changes were not seen for general words selected at random. “Our results … support the popular notion that American authors express more emotion than the British,” they write.
Shifting styles
A similar change is seen in the usage of ‘content-free’ words, such as pronouns and prepositions (such as you, us, about, within). Acerbi and his colleagues interpret this as indicating that the shift in emotionality is coupled to a general shift in literary style. US texts, they say, are becoming increasingly prolix.
See what we're tweeting about
2 Comments
Add CommentAny connexion to the fulminating acerbity of reactionary politix?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that the coincidence of speaking (almost!)the same language masks the quite deep cultural differences between us. I am British-born, but have lived for 44 of my 74 years in South Africa.My wife and I visit our children/grandchildren in England every two years or so, and will, if given the chance, chat unselfconsciously with people we meet on tube trains, in theatre queues etc. This habit we have absorbed from the outgoing South African English/Afrikaner culture. We have found that the people who chat back to us quite often turn out to be expatriate South Africans, Australians, or New Zealanders. The occasional English person who responds may turn out to have overseas connections, has worked overseas, or has a close relative who has married a foreigner. In the London Area, this reserve is almost impenetrable - one avoids eye contact in public places.In the North, where we originate, and the West Country, it's not nearly so evident, but to a returning expat like myself it's still noticeable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt shouldn't really be a surprise that cultural differences can be nailed down by meta-analyses of books, but they may not be so evident to people who've never been far from home.